Sunshine (The TV Show)

Today is the birthday of John Denver (1943-1997). In 1974, there was a TV movie (followed by a short-lived tv series) called Sunshine that used Denver’s recent hit “Sunshine on My Shoulder” as its theme song. Though I wasn’t much older than the child star at its center, I was a devotee of both. The story was a weepie about a young, good looking hippie couple with a child. Christina Raines (from Nashville) played the mother, who’s dying of cancer. Cliff de Young was the musician husband, left to raise the child on his own. Interestingly, de Young had been a real life rock musician prior to becoming an actor, and it’s him covering the Denver song on Sunshine’s theme.

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Published by travsd

Writer and performer Trav S.D. (www.travsd.com) is best known for his books "No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous" (2005) and "Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube" (2013).
He has written for the NY Times, the Village Voice, American Theatre, Time Out NY, Reason, the Villager and numerous other publications. Trav has been in the vanguard of New York’s vaudeville and burlesque scenes since 1995 when he launched his company Mountebanks, presenting hundreds of acts ranging from Todd Robbins to Dirty Martini to Tammy Faye Starlite to the Flying Karamazov Brothers. He has directed his own plays, revues and solo pieces at such venues as Joe’s Pub, La Mama, HERE, Dixon Place, Theater for the New City, the Ohio Theatre, the Brick, and 6 separate shows in the NY International Fringe Festival. In 2014 he produced and directed the smash-hit "I’ll Say She Is", the first ever revival of the Marx Brothers hit 1924 Broadway show in the NY International Fringe Festival.
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